Green technologies set for major investments

At the Montreal conference on climate change that is taking place this week, the United Nations Environment Program Finance Committee has said that banks and investment companies will begin to pump investment into clean technologies this year.
Thousands of environmental groups and governments are attending a week-long meeting in Montreal. Beginning Tuesday, November 28, it is the first meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which entered into force this year. It is being held in parallel with the 11th session of the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention also known as COP.
Introducing “The Working Capital Report,” scheduled to be published in March 2006, UN Environmental Program Executive Director Klaus Toepfer explained that the study explores the role of financial service companies and capital markets as they capitalize on new opportunities linked to sustainable development and more effective management of the associated risks.
“There is no question that 2005 will be seen as the watershed,” Toepfer said, “when the mainstream banking, insurance and investment worlds realized the scale of the commercial opportunities unfolding in the new carbon, clean-tech and sustainable natural resource markets and, also, the legal risks of not being a leader in this area.”
Financial institutions working with the United Nations have predicted that greenhouse gas emissions trading markets could reach $2 trillion a year by 2012 and that the market providing finance for clean energy technologies could reach $1.9 trillion by 2020.